"The fact is, I can always trust Groates," Ward was heard to say to a friend. "There's no shilly-shally about him. He don't pretend to be out of the way clever; but give him a thing to do, and you may be sure that thing 'll be done, without any more bother. And the time that's due to me, he don't spend in amusing himself. I'd trust Jack Groates with a five-hundred-pound note, and not a doubt in my mind. Yes, it was a good thing for myself that I ever got him here, and I don't mind saying so, though it wasn't for my sake, nor for his, that I did get him."
Somebody took the trouble to repeat the main part of this speech to Mrs. Groates; and any mother will know how pleased she was to find Jack so well understood.
Jessie heard the same tale, and Jessie took it rather differently, as girls will. She tossed her head, with disdain. "Anybody might know that of Jack. He is honest enough, dear old fellow. But he is awfully stupid sometimes, and there's no denying it."
Jessie was thinking about a certain walk in muddy fields, one dull afternoon, not far back; and she quite forgot that if Jack had followed a different tack, and had shown himself too confident, she herself would have been the first to blame him for conceit.
[CHAPTER XXIV]
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
"SUCH a little while since I came, and yet Old Maxham feels quite a home to me now! I suppose we are like creeping plants, putting out tendrils wherever they chance to be, and clinging fast. Only a few months ago I felt so alone and friendless in the world, and now it's all different,—isn't it, Hero?"
Mildred paused to pat the dog's head, as he followed close behind her. "Less than a year, and so much to have happened."
She looked down at her black dress, not yet discarded. Close upon eleven months had passed since the death of her brother and his child; and the earlier months of those eleven had dragged by very slowly while the later months, being full of work and interest, had fled three times as fast. It was difficult to believe that one year ago she had never heard of Old Maxham, or of Jessie, or of Miss Perkins.
The afternoon was keen and cold, but very still. Old Maxham had been a good deal excited during the last few days; for the long-wished-for lifeboat had at last arrived, and was now installed in the boat-house, built beforehand in readiness to receive it.